


Operation Mistletoe

by wkemeup



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Christmas Fluff, F/M, except its cute in this fic, fluffy city baby, mistletoe: the me-too of holiday garnish, suspend disbelief for me for a bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:13:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22977445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wkemeup/pseuds/wkemeup
Summary: With dozens of mistletoe appearing in archways across the compound, you start to notice a pattern when you begin to encounter Bucky Barnes beneath each one
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader
Comments: 4
Kudos: 134





	Operation Mistletoe

It was the day after Thanksgiving the first time you spotted one.

Hanging under the archway to the kitchen on a dark green ribbon, adhered crudely to Tony’s very expensive wooden crowning by a long, silver nail, was a small bouquet of mistletoe; thin, green leaves gathered under a bright red bow, decorated with spotted white and crimson bulbs.

There wasn’t a single holiday decoration in sight when you’d gone to sleep the night before and with the assignments Fury had been handing out lately, you couldn’t imagine anyone would take the time to nail a handful of leaves to the ceiling in their spare time. Sleep was a rare commodity around the Avengers compound and it wasn’t taken lightly, even amongst the chaos of the holidays. 

A single red bulb fell down from the ceiling as Sam bumped his shoulder into the wall upon his entrance. He steadied himself on the banister with sunglasses over his eyes as he nursed a devastating hangover following his three for three losses on Thanksgiving football bets.

The berry tapped your forehead before it fell to the floor and you squinted up at it like it was some sort of marriage. 

“Got you!” Bucky snuck in beside you and stole a quick kiss to your cheek as he skirted by. It was impossibly fast, almost like it hadn’t happened at all, though you could still feel the slight press of his lips on your skin after he was gone. 

Your fingertips touched the side of your face where his lips had been, watching as he jogged over to Steve carrying two bottles of water in his hands and dressed in low hanging sweatpants and a SHEILD crewneck. He turned around for a moment, walking backwards as he sent you a wink, before he disappeared down the hall to the gym.

You stood there, dumbfounded, before you shook your head and made your way to the coffee pot. It was too early to process what you were almost positive was a latent daydream anyway. 

Though, as you’d come to find a few days later on the first of December, it wasn’t an isolated incident after all.

Another pinch of Mistletoe appeared above the doorframe to the gym. It was gathering quite a bit of traffic underneath as the Avengers weren’t the only ones in the compound to take advantage of the free training room, so you ended up in a line behind a few dozen grumbling coworkers dressed in workout clothes.

Some walked right past it without a second thought. Others waited patiently underneath with an eager smile while the rest begrudgingly took part with a roll of their eyes and few stomps of their feet on the way out.

You were about to just stroll through the door without taking a moment to pause when you were stilled instantly in your tracks by a wall of muscle tossed in your direction. At your feet, Bucky Barnes was lying on his side, metal arm taking most of the impact, and you glanced up to find Steve shrugging rather suspiciously.

Bucky clambered to his feet, grinning, as he leaned against the wall beside you. “Hiya, Y/n.”

“Hey, Barnes,” you smiled back at him. 

He was out of breath and had a damp layer of sweat running across his forehead. You laughed, shaking your head as you used the small hand towel draped over your shoulder to dab it away. When you were finished, his lower tip was tugged between his teeth, smiling so wide it must have hurt his cheeks.

“You gonna let me pass?” you teased, gesturing to his position blocking you under the doorway.

“Of course!” he laughed, though he didn’t move. “Right after I…”

He slipped in faster than the first time and pressed a kiss to your cheek. It was warm, and feather light, and gone faster than you even had a chance to memorize. You hadn’t even realized you were smiling until you felt the ache in your cheeks.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” Bucky shrugged as he started to back away. “It’s tradition!

***

You started to notice a pattern when the eighth bunch of mistletoe appeared just as the elevator doors parted. You pursed your lips, staring up at the mysterious little plant that seemed to be showing up everywhere as of late, though Tony thoroughly denied any knowledge of who was hammering rusty nails into his precious architecture.

The elevator was empty as you stepped inside and you swallowed back a sliver of disappointment. Part of you expected to see Bucky waiting inside for a sneak attack; that boyish smile on his face and a blush in his cheeks. He always found himself around these things, anyway. You wondered how many times he caught Natasha or Wanda, too.

Waiting patiently as FRIDAY played soft tunes of _Sleigh Bells_ and _Winter Wonderland_ , you tapped your toe along to the music. A bell rang out and the doors began to part, allowing you to step onto your floor.

In your daze, you bumped straight into a mass of a shoulder, startling you back to focus.

“Sorry!” you gasped, reaching out instinctively to steady whoever had the misfortune of running to you prior to your coffee run.

A hand grabbed yours, curling under your fingers, and you were met with blue eyes and shaggy brown hair, as he brought your hand to his lips.

Bucky kissed your knuckles, a quick glance up to the mistletoe above, and he stepped into the elevator. He released your hand and you stood there, a little breathless and now very much awake, as the doors closed behind you. He winked just as the bell chimed and the silver doors met at the center.

You exhaled a heavy breath, your heart pounding a little harder in your chest. There was a skip in your step all the way to the breakroom.

***

Over the next month, you’d found dozens of mistletoe hanging from archways, over coatracks, under doorframes, and taped to the walls with duct tape, though Tony started taking those down rather quickly as it was risking damaging the paint. They tended to pop up in new places less than an hour later.

You’d encountered Sam under a few and he’d press a quick kiss to your cheek, a teasing smirk on his face aimed over your shoulder as he snickered under his breath. You tried to follow his line of sight, only to find no one standing behind you as you left the proximity of the flower.

There were only a few occasions you’d spotted anyone else caught under the mistletoe. Steve and Natasha were passing by one another when Clint coughed loudly from the couch, stilling them in their tracks as he shot an arrow up by the offending plant.

They both shot glares in Bucky’s direction, though you couldn’t figure out why he was the one they were angry with. He shrugged at them, wide eyes urging them on, and despite Tony grumbling under his breath as he yanked the arrow from the wall, Steve bent down a pressed a short kiss to the crown of Natasha’s head. 

It was Bucky you ran into more than anyone else. It seemed almost impossible that you stepped near one of the hanging plants without a visit from Barnes. He’d be wearing that cheesy grin on his face, swoop in and kiss you on your forehead, your nose, your cheek, your hand, even once on your shoulder when you were carrying a few dozen files on your way to Fury’s office. You found yourself starting to look for him whenever a mistletoe was hung in your path.

Soon enough the whole compound was full of them. You’d have to take expert care to find pathways around the campus without crossing a bouquet of mistletoe hanging above and while you’d seen a few agents skirt around doorways last minute or sprint through them before anyone noticed, you didn’t change a thing.

You started to walk a little quicker when you spotted one in your path, wondering if Bucky was lying in wait on the other side.

***

Bucky Barnes had a plan.

It wasn’t a very good one, but it was a plan nonetheless.

He had roped Steve into it, Natasha rather reluctantly, and Sam had forced his way on the team after he stumbled into their midnight meeting the day before Thanksgiving, fully offended he hadn’t been offered a commanding rank already.

Bucky called it Operation Mistletoe.

Sam had laughed for a solid four minutes, but that wasn’t the point.

Bucky was a goner, a true and honest head over heels _goner,_ but he was also a full-blown coward or, at least, that’s what Natasha called him. His crush on you was past the territory of sweet and moving towards pathetic, simply because it had been months since he started talking about asking you to dinner and he had yet to make a move.

The thing was, whenever he was around you, his nerves kicked up into overdrive at the sight of your smile and his stomach warped and flooded with butterflies whenever you so much as looked in his direction. Sam liked to point out the time Bucky, _the infamous winter soldier and genetically engineered killer_ , had once tripped over his own shoe laces because he was watching you shadowbox in the training ring.

There was a time he was charming once, or so he was told.

Before the war, he’d been on a few dates, knew how to talk to a pretty woman without his tongue twisting up in knots and his heart thumping straight out of his chest. He’d gone dancing and held a woman close enough to cause some distasteful stares from the bleachers, but he’d been nothing but a gentleman. Steve was very adamant about that.

Bucky hardly remembered those days.

He had the images, the memories, but they didn’t feel like his own. They were like old film reels playing in the back of his mind, a movie he’d seen once before but couldn’t quite remember the details of. The lead in that movie didn’t feel much like himself, though he tried. He could fake it for a while, he supposed.

So, the first mistletoe was hung.

He’d waited in the kitchen for nearly a half hour, jogging in place to keep his nerves from complete taking him over, as he squeezed and clenched at the plastic bottles in his hands. The crinkle of it nearly drove Natasha up a wal. 

When you finally stepped through the arc, he froze; still like a statue at the sight of you in wrinkled pajamas, disheveled hair, and pillow creases on your cheeks. It took until Sam staggered his way out into the kitchen and slammed his shoulder right into the wall for Bucky to move his damn feet.

You were starting to leave the target zone and he couldn’t let the moment slip him by.

It happened so quickly he barely had a chance to preserve the feeling. He put on a charming face, one he’d recognized from the memories in his head of the man he once was, and held his breath as he winked. He didn’t breathe again until he made it to Steve down at the gym.

They’d worked out a pretty intricate plan; one that might make Fury give it a second glance. Steve and Bucky waited patiently before you walked into the gym on December 1st; waiting for you to step under the frame before Steve hulled Bucky halfway across the gym to your feet.

He’d worked out his timing with Natasha, having her text him when you were on your way to Fury’s office so he could sprint up to the seventh floor to meet you as you left the elevator.

Steve had kept his eye out to he could sweep in to surprise you by the water refill station on the running track outside and even though Sam was a nuisance and stole a few of Bucky’s planned kisses, letting you leave from under the target zone before he’d even had a chance, he’d been helpful in nailing in dozens of mistletoe bundles overnight.

They started appearing inside closets, in the pantry shelves, on elliptical machines, tucked up into the ceiling tiles until most of the hallway on your floor was covered in a wall of green leaves and red and white flowers.

It was Christmas Eve when Tony finally lost it.

“What–” Tony tossed a bag full of mistletoe on the floor, “–did I _do_ –” he spat out a leaf, “–to deserve–”, arms flailing around him, “ _THIS!_ ”

“You aren’t the target here, boss,” Sam quipped from the corner, nail between his teeth as he stood at the top of a ladder lining up a handful of mistletoe to the wall.

“Evidently,” Tony grumbled, kicking the massive trash bag full of the plant. “Where is our Christmas princess, anyway?”

“You haven’t seen her?” Bucky asked in a panic, stepping out from behind a door he’d covered from end to end in garlands. “She was supposed to be at the coffee shop downtown with Nat this morning and then Steve was gonna stall her in the elevator long enough for us to finish this insane nonsense and—” Bucky looked around the room, his breathing starting to pick up, “ _Why in the hell am I doing this!?_ ”

“Barnes, will you _calm down_ ,” Sam shot back, jumping off the ladder. “Nat’s had eyes on her the whole time. She’s down by the lake.”

Tony raised an eyebrow. “It’s snowing…”

“Girl likes Christmas,” Sam shrugged, returning to his task at hand. He had a whole box to adhere to the wall in an hour and he wasn’t about to let Bucky Barnes get the better of him. Besides, he liked seeing you happy but hell if he understood why Barnes was the cause of it.

“Down by the lake?” Bucky repeated, moving to the window as he spotted you standing down by the frozen water, dressed in a thick winter coat and wrapped under scarfs and hats and gloves. You were just staring out into the blanket of white.

Bucky glanced back to the extravagant room; the mistletoe hung in every crook and crevasse, Tony shaking his head at the exuberant amount of decorations hung on his ceiling, Sam whistling _Let It Snow_ to himself as he hammered in another bundle to the wall.

It was a lot; over the top maybe, though Steve insisted it was a grand gesture. Bucky found himself turning back to look at you down by the water, hands stuffed into your pockets, perfectly content to watch the snow fall. Something so simple, so misleadingly small, but it brought you so much joy. 

See, Bucky liked you for the small things, too. 

He liked that you noticed what cereal he reached for in the morning so you could hand it to him before he asked, how you knew the hour he went running with Steve so you could time the coffee pot to be ready for when he got back, and how you’d come to notice that he liked to prop his feet up on the ottoman during movie nights so you save him a spot nearest a decent footrest.

You cared for him in ways he hadn’t known in decades. It was always the little things with you. It was how he’d come to fall for you so easily.

Christmas was your favorite time of year and he only knew it because you hummed _That’s What Christmas Means to Me_ under your breath in the middle of July and always had fresh baked cookies on the counter every week in December. You wore earrings that looked like bows on a present and snuck down to Rockefeller to watch the official Christmas Tree lighting every year.

A thought dawned on him, a surge of courage, and Bucky set a handful of mistletoe on the counter.

“I’ll be right back,” Bucky said slowly, pushing aside layers of the plant coating the floor.

“Where you going, Barnes? I’m not doing this myself!” Sam called while Tony grumbled about _someone_ needing to clean up this mess before he gets back from his massage.

Bucky barely heard them.

He bumped into Steve and Natasha in the elevator, brushing past them in a hurry and too focused on his own mission to notice the slight dishevel of Steve’s short hair and Natasha adjusting the bottom of her shirt.

“Buck, hold on! What are you–”

“No time,” Bucky cut Steve short, repeatedly pressing the ground floor button despite the fact it lit up on the first try. He was smiling to himself as the doors closed, swaying on his heels. He had a mission to complete.

He was still wrapping a coat he borrowed from the closet around his shoulders when he made it down to the lake. It smelled faintly of Sam’s cologne and he scrunched his nose, hobbling on untied snow boots as he fumbled with the zipper. He found you standing in the same spot, under the tree you usually spent your summers reading under if Fury didn’t call you away on missions.

“Hey Barnes,” you said cheerily, back still turned to him though he swore he could picture your smile.

“How’d you know it was me?” he asked as he came up beside you.

“Lucky guess.”

You glanced up at him, squinting from the brightness of the sun’s reflection on the snow, though your smile turned to a frown quickly. You nudged his arm playfully and dug deep into the pocket of Sam’s jacket. Bucky watched, confused, until you pulled out a beanie, gesturing for him to lower his head.

“You’ll catch a cold, super soldier,” you reminded him, slipping the warm hat over his head and pushing the hair away from his eyes. “Don’t matter if you can’t feel it.”

You turned back to the frozen lake, contently watching the snowfall and the glisten of the ice. Bucky shifted nervously in his stance, kicking at the snow below. He took in a deep breath, hoping he’d find his courage and his words as he went.

“Did you know that Loki is partially responsible for the tradition of kissing under mistletoe?” you asked, cutting Bucky off before he could get a tongue-tied word out. He sighed of relief, shaking his head. “Turns out, Odin has more children than he lets on. He has a third son named Baldur who was once fated by the gods to die. So, his mother Frigga, the goddess of love, asked all living creatures, both plants and animals alike, to vow to never harm her son.”

Bucky didn’t know the story and he found himself smiling just listening to you. He studied your face as you spoke, your bright eyes glancing up at the snowfall and the blanket-covered trees.

“She never thought to ask the mistletoe,” you continued. “So, Loki constructed a weapon of the plant to kill his brother.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Bucky laughed, having met Loki on a few occasions.

You nodded, grinning. “Thankfully, Frigga was able to revive him. In the wake of his rebirth, she turned mistletoe into a symbol of love and vowed to kiss all those who walk beneath it in celebration of her son.”

Bucky smirked, chewing on his lips. “I didn’t know that.”

“I’m surprised,” you shrugged. Bucky narrowed his eyes. “Aren’t you the one with an affinity for mistletoe?”

Bucky exhaled, surprised his heart didn’t beat right out of his chest. He was surprisingly calm. “You figured that out, huh?”

“Kind of hard not to,” you giggled and it was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. “I bet HR has been on the hunt for you.”

You were laughing but Bucky’s stomach lurched. He took a few steps back, almost stumbling. A blush rose in his cheeks as bright as the berries adorned on the garlands he’d been hanging all month.

“Oh _no._.. I didn’t– _shit_ – I didn’t even think about– I shouldn’t have– I’m _so_ sorry, Y/n! I’ll go straight to HR and – and—” Bucky’s hands were clasped on his head, putting space between you but you didn’t allow for it. You rushed towards him, grabbing his hands to keep him from spiraling and your soft laugh was enough to still him in his tracks.

“I’m teasing, Buck!” You grinned, tugging him back to the tree. “I thought it was sweet. Tony might beg to differ, though.”

“Y-yeah, he wasn’t super happy with me,” Bucky chuckled nervously. He looked down to find your hands still holding his. He couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away.

Soft red mittens encased with white designs of reindeer and sleighs, gentle knitting protecting your hands from the cold, though he could still feel the squeeze of your fingers on his own. The pressure was still there, the affection that followed, and he wondered if you could hear his heart beating out of his chest. 

“Bucky?”

He squeezed at your fingers, feeling for them again under layers of gloves; so tangible, so perfectly fit within his own. “Hmm?”

“Look up, will you?”

Bucky narrowed his eyes, finally tearing his gaze from your hands to find you biting on your lip, grinning despite yourself. You gestured towards the sky and Bucky glanced up.

Amongst the snow fluttering down from the clouds and the slight breeze burning on his cheeks, he noticed something hanging on the edge of the single branch jutting out over where a bench usually sat when it wasn’t buried under a few feet of snow.

Green leaves, red and white bulbs, all tied together with a bright red ribbon.

“Got you,” you whispered and Bucky swore his whole world stopped spinning just long enough for him to memorize this moment. 

The truth was, you’ve had him, longer than he could ever admit, and he wondered if you ever realized how much of his heart you held in your hands.

“Well… it is tradition, isn’t it?” Bucky replied breathlessly. He was smiling so wide it ached in his cheeks. It was a new feeling, to be so blissfully happy he could feel it deep in his bones.

The palm of his right hand settled against your jaw, thumb brushing gingerly along your lips to your cheekbone; warm and soft despite the chill of the wind. Snowflakes fell on your lashes, dissolving as you blinked them away.

Bucky leaned in slowly, watching for his breath because he was sure he might lose it at any given second. The soft clouds of your breath brushed over his nose and you giggled again; the sound so sweet he was sure he’d hear it again in his dreams.

Held with little distance between you, Bucky was almost positive you could feel the tremors in his breath as they touched your cheeks, though you didn’t give him much time to panic before you surged forward and kissed him.

Stunned, Bucky almost couldn’t make sense of the way your lips were on his, the press of them, the slight chill of the cold, the warmth of your breath and softness of your touch. It was more than he’d imagined, more than he’d had in years and it was perfect. It was a dream, one he was determined to never wake up from again. 

Until he heard the hollering up from the second-floor window.

“That’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout!” Sam shouted, waving a long garland around his head like a helicopter while Steve hung over the open window, smiling like a proud dad. Natasha was on his right, whispering something in his ear that got him so red in the face, it matched the ribbon adorned on the mistletoe hanging above your head.

“Does this mean you’re going finally take down all the mistletoe?” Tony called.

Bucky turned back to you, still wrapped up in his arms. “Not a chance.”

He’d take any excuse he could to kiss you again like this.

Even if he didn’t need any excuse at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Please also see this rant by John Mulaney on mistletoe because I thought about it the entire time I wrote this and I’m still laughing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j6kjvp9iOc


End file.
